Comments for On Hobbes’ Leviathan at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 7 out of 7 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Fri, 24 May 2013 07:35:31 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4672 Currently I am enrolled in a graduate program at a Catholic School taking Modern Philosophy this summer. We read "Leviathan” for the class. I was stunned by the connections between Hobbesian political philosophy and liberalism. George Marlin performs a great service in explicating and illuminating those connections and several others I had missed. Self-preservation in Hobbesian-think is the basic human good both universal and worth protection, yet it is being replaced in our era of relativism that enjoys primacy of place in polite conversation, political theory, and policy makers. Perhaps it is the thin, wrongheaded anthropology that Hobbes offers that grounds the problem: “And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Leviathan, 62. With this vacuous understanding of the human person, control through total power does appear to be a reasonable response to force the populace to abandon their selfish pursuits and direct them toward the societal good regardless of the lethal methods necessary. A return to Natural Law and Thomism may be our last, best hope in this arena. - Timothy J.A. O'Donnell Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:48:35 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4664 To be fair, Hobbes wrote at a time period when the chief peril was disorder not overwhelming state power. Much of that disorder was state-caused of course, nontheless he could be pardoned in the seventeenth century for thinking that almost any government was better than none. - jason taylor Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:05:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4663 Hobbes actually built on Lucretius, the Roman philosopher who 15 centuries before posited the universe consisted of "atoms and the void." Hobbes's atheistic materialism found fertile ground in the likes of Hume and Rousseau, the latter's "social contract" envisioning not merely a pledge to obey the ruler (as in Hobbes's Levianthan), but as as an agreement of individuals to subordinate their judgment, rights and powers to the needs and judgment of their community as a whole. Interestingly, Rousseau wrote, "the vote of the majority always binds all the rest," and called for the general will of the community or 'public spirit' past, present and future to prevail in all things. But today, despite votes and polls(Prop 8 in California) and SB1270 in Arizona where a majority of citizens favor public policies among many examples, the government (ruling class) does what it wants irrespective of the general will. Democracy, being direct rule by the people, is impossible, according to Rousseau, who wrote: "It we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed." Plato's philosopher-king ('a good king with a sharp axe,' as a street philosopher friend of my puts it) seems preferable to our current system of oligarchic totalitarianism, but the die was cast back in 1776 and there's no turning back. - Joe Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:07:41 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4662 Mr. Marlin, thank you for this column, and please consider writing a column on "the insights of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas that man by his nature is a social animal who forms society by the demands and impulses of his rational nature working through free will." It would benefit those unfamiliar with Aristotle and Aquinas, as well as those of us familiar with them but interested in how you would articulate their insights. - Martin Dybicz Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:07:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4661 "... one wonders if the Hobbesian within the liberal breast is stirring."!? I am long past 'wondering' that. - Richard Imgrund Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:13:54 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4660 As an amateur philosopher, I agree with Mr. Marlin that in the end Hobbes' political philosophy is dangerous in the extreme, nonetheless, Hobbes, more than any of the other classical political thinkers, understood the demonic dimension of our human nature. The solution that he proposed, however, simply transferred the demonic from the individual to the state. As Marlin implies, the solution - to the extent that any solution exists - lies in institutionalized checks and balances and in the all-important principle of subsidiarity. - John McCarthy Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:31:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-hobbes-leviathan.html#comment-4659 In Hobbes' theory, law exists only in consequence of the contract that creates the sovereign. So long as contracts are enforced and we're prohibited from killing each other, justice is whatever the sovereign says it is. - James Danielson Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:12:02 +0100